Songwriting

Our pitch to publisher webinar on Thursday reminded me of several points that I think bear bringing up every now and then. Almost everyone involved in the song submitting process behaved professionally. One or two did not. One of those people e-mailed us after the event claiming that we must not have listened to their…

Some of you have heard me tell this story before. Early in my writing career, I had enjoyed all the family activities I could stand and I needed a little break. So, I went to our publishing office to work on some ideas and plan my strategy for the upcoming year. The music business in…

In the past week, I’ve had conversations with several SongTownians who were thinking about quitting songwriting.  They were on the verge of never writing another song. Their frustration at their lack of commercial success had proved to be a crushing blow to them.  In every case, they had turned over their joy to the fickle…

ASCAP #1 Songwriter Party for Clay Mills & Darius Rucker I remember 6 years ago driving with my publisher Kurt Denny from Tennessee to Kentucky, where I was about to climb on the Hootie and the Blowfish tour bus. Kurt had arranged my first major artist co-write with rocker Darius Rucker. I was quiet the…

I wrote songs for about 5 years before the first time I had anyone at a ‘professional’ level chime in on my writing or critique any of my songs. (Disclaimer: that autocorrected to ‘I wrote dogs for about 5 years’….and I’m not all that sure it isn’t accurate.) There were bits and pieces of goodness…

My #1 goal in doing mentoring sessions is to help people learn how to critique their own songs… I’m trying to work my way out of a job, in a sense. If writers learn to critique their own work, then they don’t depend on me or anyone else to tell them when their songs are…

Act Like You Know! In the music business, your best bet is to try and ACT like you know what you are doing, even if you don’t. You want to come across to people like you know how things work in the big leagues even if you are just trying out for the farm team…

Someone recently asked me what I wish I had known when I first started trying to be a professional songwriter. There’s a lot of advice I WISH someone had given me back then, but here are a few things I would share with my younger songwriter self based on what I know now. Don’t put…

A home that’s unique for songwriters… In a world where there are an increasing number of options for songwriters to gather and to get education, Clay and I feel it is important from time to time to remind everyone of the things that make SongTown different from any other songwriting community you might be a…

The Basics Of Lyric Writing… For those who are new to songwriting or for those who just want to remind themselves of the fundamentals, here are some of the basics of songwriting. Intro The instrumental piece that starts the song and sets the musical tone for the song. This piece establishes the groove or feel…